>I understood the point Brian was making (that what we call the
>middle component of the triple is one thing, and the kind of thing
>it *is* is something else; that's why I referred to "overloading"
>in my earlier message on this subject), but it's not clear we've yet
>arrived at a satisfactory resolution. The point is, if "predicate"
>is a misleading term to use in referring to the thing, ought we to
>continue to use it?
I take it that we are kind of stuck with it for the grammatical
category as it is built into RDF syntax as rdf:Predicate. I think
that as long as we use it along with 'subject' and 'object' only as a
kind of syntax-technical term for the middle part of a triple, and
take care not to say that the things in the domain - the things
denoted - *are* predicates, this will be fine. After all, we can say
that John is the subject of the sentence 'John loves Mary', but it
would seem odd to categorize him as being a subject rather than a
human being on that basis.
Pat
>Brian McBride wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>Pat Hayes wrote:
>>
>>>>I support this as a change in specification prose.
>>>>Please note there is an RDF property named "predicate"; it's used in
>>>>reification. Changing that is a different matter.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Yes, I just remembered this myself, and agree that would be a
>>>different matter altogether. I think I now follow Brian's earlier
>>>message. The idea would be that subject/predicate/object are
>>>grammatical categories for the parts of a triple, but the actual
>>>thing indicated by the predicate - the thingie in the middle - is
>>>called a property, right?
>>
>>
>>
>>That is my interpretation of current usage. So in an api, I have:
>>
>> stmt.getSubject()
>> stmt.getPredicate()
>> stmt.getObject()
>>
>>to deconstruct a statement.
>>
>> stmt.getResource
>>
>>does not make sense.
>>
>>Brian
>>
>
>
>--
>Frank Manola The MITRE Corporation
>202 Burlington Road, MS A345 Bedford, MA 01730-1420
>mailto:fmanola@mitre.org voice: 781-271-8147 FAX: 781-271-875
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